Rate My Professor Natalie Eddington

Natalie D. Eddington, PhD, FAAPS, FCP, serves as Dean Emerita and Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy (UMSOP) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). She earned her PhD in 1989 from UMSOP, the first female African American to achieve this milestone. Following two years at Pfizer, Eddington joined the UMSOP faculty in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1991 as an assistant professor, later becoming department chair in 2003. From August 2007 to May 2023, she led UMSOP as dean for nearly 16 years, becoming UMB's first female African American dean and its longest-serving at the time. She now remains on faculty and directs UMB's EMBRACE initiative. A nationally recognized expert in drug delivery and pharmacokinetics, her research examines drug transport across the blood-brain barrier for medications treating cancer, epilepsy, arthritis, and drugs of abuse, alongside biopharmaceutics and pharmacokinetics to optimize drug therapy. This work has underpinned numerous FDA regulatory guidances. As former director of the Pharmacokinetics-Biopharmaceutics Laboratory, she has advanced the field significantly.

Key publications include "Trends in Research and Graduate Programs in Schools and Colleges of Pharmacy, Part 1: Programs" (2020), "Trends in Research and Graduate Affairs in Schools and Colleges of Pharmacy, Part 2: Students" (2020), "Pharmapreneur - Defining a Framework for Entrepreneurship in Pharmacy Education" (2019), "Trends in the Pharmacist Workforce and Pharmacy Education" (2019), and "Report of the 2014-2016 AACP Research and Graduate Affairs Committee" (2016), with over 5,600 citations. During her deanship, Eddington oversaw the Pharmacy Hall Addition (2010), quadrupled extramural funding to over $25.9 million, established centers such as the Bio- and Nano-Technology Center, Mass Spectrometry Center, and Maryland Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation, and launched the nation's first MS in Medical Cannabis Science and Therapeutics plus the Pharmapreneurship initiative. She chaired the AACP Council of Deans, served on its board, and received the Hartmut Derendorf Mentorship in Clinical Pharmacology Award (ACCP, 2023), Distinguished Service and Catalyst for Excellence Awards (2025), and honorary presidency from the Maryland Pharmacists Association.